Members of a legislative task force reviewing Utah's public records law have recommended blocking access to such correspondence.

Lawmakers also are considering allowing public employees to reject records requests they decide are meant to "harass," to charge more for government records provided in spreadsheet or database form and to require that all appeals go to the State Records Committee before they could go to court.

The task force picking through the 13-year-old Government Records Access and Management Act (GRAMA) was supposed to be looking at ways to protect residents from identity theft and local governments from malicious requests for records. And while legislators are going through contortions to keep Social Security numbers, home addresses and phone numbers out of government records, they also are inserting provisions to limit public access to other information.

A draft bill forwarded on to the 2006 Legislature clarifies the definition of a public record. Every state agency and local government would be required to file a schedule of records it would maintain. And the judicial and legislative branches would be allowed to classify and retain their own records.

Lawmakers removed provisions in the bill to block access to "internal communication" or memos that do not establish policy - the "most provocative" parts of the bill, according to task force co-chairman Dave Thomas, a Republican state senator from South Weber.

But legislators did not balk at exempting all correspondence between elected officials and any "citizen of the State of Utah" from public view. Under the provisions of the legislation, which was recommended Tuesday by the task force, such letters or e-mails or notes would not become public unless the writer or the receiver agreed to make it public. That change in the law could have blocked access to Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson's appeals for protestors of President Bush's visit to Utah last August. It also would have cloaked in privacy the hundreds of constituent letters and e-mails sent to Anderson in response to the protest. Instead, it would allow the mayor, or any other public official, to release only correspondence that reflected favorably on them.

Another change to GRAMA, not yet voted on by the task force, would also give broad discretion to government workers about what documents to release. Under the proposal, public employees could deny records requests they judged to be "harassing or otherwise unreasonably increasing the workload or causing unwarranted expense."

Allison Barlow Hess, a Weber State University journalism professor and Society of Professional Journalists Utah Board member, warned about possible abuses of that power. "Who gets to decide when it's harassment and when it's a reasonable request even if it falls at an inconvenient time?"

Paul Thompson, an attorney representing the town of Alta, said the current law can be manipulated to interfere with legitimate public business. "There are several frustrated developers who would like to use the procedures in GRAMA to tie up the staffs of small towns," he said.

Lawmakers held back action on provisions of the law that would classify all Social Security numbers in government records as "protected." Local government officials said such a change in the law would require them to purchase expensive software to censor those numbers. And lobbyists for credit agencies and the real estate industry said blocking access to Social Security numbers would be crippling in their efforts to identify property owners and consumers.

Candace Daly, from the Consumer Data Information Association, noted 42 million Americans change their addresses each year. Another 3 million couples get divorced annually. And 14 million Americans share 10 common last names.

"It's very difficult to make sure you are you - unless you have a Social Security number," she said.